


buttercups in the meadows

by PuriPuki



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, F/M, Minor Character Death, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 14:42:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10664790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PuriPuki/pseuds/PuriPuki
Summary: Owain is three years old when his little sister is born. His mama says, “This is Bonnie, your little sister,”. Bonnie is small and pink and squishy, and asleep. Owain tells his mother, “She’s ugly. Put her back.”





	buttercups in the meadows

Owain is three years old when his little sister is born. His mama says, “This is Bonnie, your little sister,”. Bonnie is small and pink and squishy, and asleep. Owain tells his mother, “She’s ugly. Put her back.”

 

Bonnie is small and pink and cries a lot, to the point of waking him up when the stars are still hanging from the sky. On the nights he stumbles down the hall to the nursery, his mother is humming softly with Bonnie in her arms, rocking and swaying. Sometimes it’s his father trying to coax her back to sleep, singing little songs while they both start to doze in the rocking chair. 

 

Bonnie cries when Owain tries to play with her, but his mother says she’s still too small to play. Instead, Owain sits with her while she smacks her dolls around and babbles away. Bonnie is still small and squishy, but a little less pink. 

 

She’s four years old when she first comes down with the nastiest of colds. Owain is seven years old, and spends his days practicing with his wooden sword and venturing into the woods with his father in search of rabbits and the rare deer. His mother fusses more than she ever has over him, and for a moment, he is jealous.

 

Then Bonnie vomits on herself, and the jealousy is gone.

 

After that first bout of sickness, it becomes common. Bonnie is like Brady, always sick and trembling a little, but Bonnie wants to be stronger. Despite snot dribbling from her nose and a chest rattling cough, she joins Owain on his little adventures, which become the inklings of the Justice Cabal. 

 

Owain is eight years old when he comes home covered in blood and dragging his father’s body behind him. Bonnie is only five, but still cries and cries and cries when daddy won’t wake up. She coughs and hacks her way through the funeral, the smoke of the pyre crippling her lungs. 

 

They go to Ylisstol, where his mother says she grew up, and Bonnie gets sicker. Though the countryside air did nothing to prevent her colds and bouts with stomach bugs, the city air is somehow dirtier and clogs her lungs. It is impossible to sneak up on their uncle, because her persistent cough always gives them away - but Uncle Chrom is a good sport, and pretends not to notice them every time. 

 

Even though the nation is plagued with food shortages, they do not feel this for months. The day Owain is presented with a dinner the size of those his father used to make, Bonnie cries and whines, but he remains silent. Just because Bonnie is unfamiliar with shortages doesn’t mean that he isn’t. 

 

Bonnie becomes an honorary member of the Justice Cabal just in time for Morgan and his mother to go missing and for Uncle Chrom to be burnt on the pyre, leaving their cousin Lucina in shambles. Bonnie weaves little flower circlets for Lucina, out of the flowers that bloom in the gardens, hoping to pick up her cousin’s mood. If anything, her mood drops even further. 

 

When she is crowned Exalt, Owain and his family - what’s left of it - stand by her. Bonnie coughs and hacks throughout the ceremony, but they manage. He is nine years old when Lucina is the queen, and is unaware of the next tragedy his family will face.

 

Owain and Bonnie play in the meadows on the outskirts of the city, always overseen by their mother, who trusts no one but herself to keep an eye on them. Bonnie is in the middle of making a small crown of buttercups when she keels over, and almost looks like she’s asleep.

 

Lissa is there immediately, fingers to her daughter’s neck and a frantic look in her eyes. Owain is young still, and stands to the side. He lets his mother work, and sits quietly, listening to the sounds the meadow makes. He idly wonders when Bonnie will wake up.

 

The soft breeze that makes the grass wave is broken, split by a mother’s grief. 

 

Bonnie is burned the next day. 

 

And life goes on. Owain trains, pushes down the feelings of loss, and does as his mother says. He loses her two years later, but life goes on. He trains. His fingers blister, and heal, and blister again. Brady chides him for this, for letting himself be so careless with his help. 

 

He wants to chirp right back, make some quirky remark about heroes not needing medical help, but the only thing in his mind is,  _ medicine didn’t help Bonnie, how can it help me? _ He lets Brady cover his hands in salve and bandage, and goes back to training.

 

Life goes on. The Awakening cannot be performed.

 

But they can go back. They can save their parents, save the people of the world,  _ save the future _ . Lucina tells them that they have a chance to fix things. 

 

A chance to save people they couldn’t before.

 

And life goes on, even after meeting his parents for the second time. His mother and father are so much younger her, so unburdened by war and violence. They guide him as he readjusts to live with plenty - he’s never  _ ever _ seen so much food in one place, and tears up when he is presented a full dinner plate. 

 

His father, whose twang is still a little too thick to match up to his memory, doesn’t want to know about the future. “We’ll find out what’s in store in due time, I ain’t gotta know yet.”

 

His mother, on the other hand, wants to know everything.

“Where did you grow up?” She asks one day, while they train - in this time, she works with an axe, and she is stronger than he remembers.

 

“In dad’s village. I never learned the name. We moved to Ylisstol when I was about eight, I think.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Dad died. You wanted to be closer to family, probably.”

 

“Oh,” she says, her grip on the axe loosening, “Did you have any siblings?”

 

“...” He hesitates. He wants to tell her, he wants to tell her everything he remembers about Bonnie - how she looked (dark eyes and light hair, always curly and a hassle to comb), what she was like (rough and tumble, even when she was too sick to move), what she liked (flowers, she loved flowers and just sitting in the forest). “I didn’t have any. It was just me, Lucina, and the twins.”

 

“Twins?! You mean Chrom and Robin are gonna have twins!?” Lissa exclaims, dropping the axe and hurling a slew of questions about Emmie and Morgan at him. 

 

He answers them with more vigor than usual, and chides himself for not telling the truth. But, it keeps her safe. It’s better for her to not know that she couldn’t save her own daughter, right?

  
  


Life, after the final battle, goes on. 

 

The thirteen of them travel the world. The earn money through Inigo’s dancing and Brady’s violin, and travel atop the backs of Minerva and Bellfire and Amalthea - Severa’s new steed, though she remains a mercenary, the pegasus refuses to leave her side. They spend two long years exploring the world and helping those in need. It’s good. It’s probably the best outcome they never foresaw, where they don’t split up, where no one vanishes.

 

Afterall, they’ve probably got the worst case of abandonment issues the world’s ever seen.

 

At the end of the two years, they return to Ylisstol to find the Queen returned safe and sound. Little Lucina is two years old now, and Owain knows it won’t be long now, it is May and he is two years younger than Lucina - he expects to find his mother expecting when the return, but she is not. At least, not in the way he thought. 

 

Lissa is, indeed, expecting her first child; but it is May and she is only four months along. Owain may not be the best at math, but this simply doesn’t match up - he was  _ not  _ born in October, but he knows who was.

 

On October 3rd, Owain arrives in a small farming village in the southern peninsula of Ylisse. It is late in the evening, but his father welcomes him home anyways. He has a small carving of a buttercup flower in his hand, and places it on the nightstand by his mother’s bedside. In her arms is a small, pink, and squishy thing.

 

“This,” Lissa tells him, whispering over the child’s head, “is Bonnie.”

  
“Hello, baby sister,” Owain whispers to her, “It’s good to see you again.”

**Author's Note:**

> this is a little rushed, but a happy anniversary gift to my lovely girlfriend! i know that bonnie is technically your oc and not fully developed, but i hope you like this!! (●♡∀♡)


End file.
